Monster

A tall, masculine looking woman approached the podium before the amassed biologists and geneticists. There were murmurs in the crowd. They had expected Hans Kölch, not this woman… who could be his twin sister.

“What you see is the result of years of research. I am genetically a woman now, the process of transformation taking 5 years to complete.” That drew gasps and amazed discussion amongst the audience.

“This was accomplished through genegineered retro viruses that remove the Y chromosome and replace it with a copy of the existing X chromosome. These same viruses are also 90% infectious to all males. I must inform you that you all have been exposed to these viruses.”

Utter silence greeted that statement.

“Over the past five years, I have been actively involved in spreading these viruses across the globe,” she said. “The transformation cannot be stopped. I did this to end war, violence, overpopulation and misogyny. Call me a monster if you will, but it had to be done for the good of all…”

The rest of her statement was quickly drowned out by the audience, which surged to its feet and roared like an angry tide. Most of the crowd’s shouting was incoherent, but amongst them, a few voices could be picked out:

“Are you insane? No men means no population at all… you’ve doomed Mankind to death in a generation!”

“—irresponsible idiot! Genetics is not a personal plaything! Your virus will ruin us!—”

“—single greatest calamity to Mankind—”

“—lying COW! That is not Kölch!—”

“—since HITLER—”

A few of the scientists seemed about to rush the podium and the ersatz Kölch. One of the men moved for the stairs to the side of the stage, another began to follow him. But as they reached the stage, they were suddenly confronted with another woman, already two steps up, facing them. She casually put a hand on the first scientist’s lapel, and pushed… and he stumbled backward, into his following compatriots, and they all ended up in a tangle on the ground.

Other men looked at the knot of compatriots, and turned to the woman on the stairs, clearly intending to grab her. Then they saw her eyes, steely, boring down upon them; and an expression that suggested she would have no trouble dispatching the rest of them down the stairs. Her arresting posture cowed the men, and they stood their ground, not quite willing to defy her.

Satisfied that the men would stay down, the woman turned and ascended to the stage. Kölch finally saw her, and watched as she approached at a casual, almost intentionally sensuous stride. When the woman reached the podium, she casually took the microphone off of its stand.

Then she hit Kölch in the head with it. The reverb of the impact screamed through the auditorium speakers, adding an audible shock to the scene, and the scientists gasped in shock. Kölch, herself, reeled from the blow, one hand clutching her head as the other windmilled for balance. The woman grabbed Kölch’s hand and twisted it behind her back, then kicked out with an immaculately-heeled foot, swept Kölch’s legs out from under her, and threw Kölch to the ground. The woman fell upon Kölch, keeping her arm pinned behind her and sitting on the small of Kölch’s back to prevent her from escaping.

The scientists had largely stood, silent and awestruck, as the assault had taken place before them. Those few whose view of the women on the stage floor were blocked by the podium, quickly surged to one side or the other to get a better view.

Kölch seemed stunned, struggling weakly but unable to move. The other woman, now straddling her calmly, finally threw back her head to clear her hair from her face… and casually lifted the microphone to her mouth.

“Ladies and Gentlemen: I am Doctor Madelyne Evenston. My colleagues call me Maddie. How do you do.” Her introduction was greeted by a solitary grunt from Kölch, who tried to free her pinned arm; but Evenston continued to restrain her. “I must apologize for this rather alarming demonstration—” and at this point, she looked down at Kölch, and grinned slightly “—none more alarmed than my esteemed colleague below me, I’m sure. But I believed this was the most effective way to present my counterpoint to this ill-conceived experiment, to wit: Dr. Kölch. You are nine types of a moron.”

Even Kölch seemed to have nothing to say to the accusation, other than to make another feeble attempt to escape her captor. Dr. Evenston paid her exactly no mind, as she continued speaking, to her and the audience.

“In typically human male fashion, you have actually fallen for the masculine conceit that only men are capable of violence, misogyny… war. In doing so, you have cast a blind eye towards the prisons that swell with women, many of whom took lives for no better reason than that some man was screwing some woman other than her… or to take revenge over a costly divorce… or because she was stupid enough to do something that some stupider man convinced her to do.”

Someone in the audience started to harrumph in approval of Evenston’s words. One look from Evenston’s steely eyes, directly at the scientist, silenced him. Evenston cast her eyes across the audience, assuring silence from the rest of them. Then she glanced at a small group of scientists who had ascended the stage finally, their manner suggesting the desire to wrest her from Kölch’s back, if not the stage. Evenston’s glance caused them to stop in place as well.

Evenston turned back to her captive, and her audience. “You have also assumed that females, the oft-called ‘weaker sex,’ aren’t physically or mentally capable of harming anyone on their own. By extension, that a woman has never struck a man… harmed a child… killed an infant. That no woman has ever participated in war, or pulled a trigger in anything beyond self-defense. That no woman is capable of getting angry, and perhaps flying off the handle, letting the chips fall where they may. So I say again: You are nine types of a moron.

“As I have just demonstrated, women are as fully capable of stupid, arrogant, dangerous behavior as men. Women are fully capable of convincing men that their fat asses are worth fighting over… of starting wars for them… and finishing them. By removing men from the equation, you have solved, exactly, nothing. In fact, you’ve proven that you were never too far from being a woman, Dr. Kölch… you’ve ably demonstrated that you can be as conniving as the rest of us.”

A few quiet chuckles came from the audience. Without moving her head, Evenston simply cast her eyes out into the audience, a stare that any child would recognize from an angry headmaster, and they stopped.

“And so,” Dr. Evenston went on, “I’m going to have to hope that, like many men and women, you are as bad with your science as you are with your reasoning.” With that, Evenston got up from Kölch’s back and took a single step backward. Kölch slowly rolled over and looked up at her assailant, glaring furiously, but at the same time, made no move to stand up.

“I’m going to hope,” Dr. Evenston said, “that your virus can be reversed, and that we can restore manhood to those who want or deserve it. I’m going to hope that scientists like you will eventually be shut down by those members of humanity, with X AND Y chromosomes, who have learned how to reason out sound solutions to the begging problems of mankind.

“And finally,” Evenston concluded, “when the rest of the world hears about what you’ve done, and the incredible burden of time, effort and resources we will have to pull from other deserving projects to clean up your mess… I hope, Dr. Kölch, that it is a woman who kills you for it.”

Dr. Evenston let go of the mike. Dr. Kölch visibly flinched as it dropped and rebounded off the floor next to her. Then Kölch, and the rest of the auditorium, watched in silence as Dr. Evenston walked quietly off the stage.

When Evenston reached the foot of the stage, she stopped and regarded a nearby scientist who stood staring at her, dumbstruck. After a moment, she said: “This might be your last chance at being a man for a while, mister.” She slipped her arm under his. “So you’re buying.”